SteamVR

"It's happening!"

Please keep in mind that this tech is still in experimental / unstable stages. Save your games often because crashes can and will happen. Not all games work and compatibility may come and go with game updates. We tried some most-wanted titles and here are quick summaries what you can expect:

Euro Truck Simulator 2

You need to go to Steam properties of ETS and use beta branch named "Oculus". Then you need to add -openvr in launch arguments. Disable Steam Desktop Theater for this game so it won't launch in flat mode.

Elite: Dangerous

It works but has issues with blurry text. This problem is common even on real HTC Vive devices. You can read some research here.

We recommend using 1920x1080 for stream resolution. Make sure your phone has 1080p display as well.

Those apps have extra lag and capture problems because essentialy everything is captured and rendered twice as many times as native VR games. We are trying to figure out ways to reduce the latency in those cases.

We recommend using 1920x1080 for stream resolution. Make sure your phone has 1080p display as well.

There are few steps you need to follow before SteamVR games can work.

1. Install SteamVR runtime in your Steam.

2. Install VRidge SteamVR driver. SteamVR path should be filled automatically. If it's empty, manually point it to vrpathreg.exe, which is located somewhere in your SteamVR location. This can be done after connecting your mobile app to the client.

3. Launch SteamVR. You need to launch SteamVR while your mobile app is connected to RiftCat. If you launch SteamVR without mobile app paired, close it and start it again after connecting mobile app.

If you can't see this button, start SteamVR from your library (it's a regular game)

If you are asked to run "Room setup" please choose standing experience and enter your height when you are asked to. Otherwise your camera may be too close to the ground for comfortable use.SteamVR setup/tutorial VR mode is upside down and aligned incorrectly. It won't affect other games.

4. Small SteamVR window will open. If your mobile device was connected when you started SteamVR, it should display Connected and SteamVR games will show Play in VR as an option.

That's it! You should be able to play a lot of amazing SteamVR games now. If your mobile device drops connection you can reconnect VRidge by reopening mobile app. It shouldn't require game/SteamVR restart.

If you are stuck with Headset not detected message, close SteamVR, make sure your mobile device is connected to Riftcat client and start SteamVR again.

If you have problems, please reach out to us through our help center (we will keep adding known issues with SteamVR there soon) or reddit (so we can share workaround and solutions as a community):

Android CPU usage optimized == a lot less pixel artifacts

We solved one very common cause of pixel artifacts happening due to "Frame loss @ decoder". We optimized some of our algorithms and the overall CPU usage dropped by ~50%. This is important because Android devices will generate less heat and therefore Android OS won't downclock CPU to counter the heat.

Core frequency downclocking due to high heat (thermal throttling) fixed pixel aritfacts for nearly all of our devices. There is still room for more optimizations so if you are still experiencing high frame loss @ decoder, don't worry - we will keep trying to optimize and find all the problems.

We have a request - can anyone with Asus Zenfone 2 reply in comments if they got VRidge working correctly? It seems that everyone with this specific phone model is getting constant artifacts.

Memory leaks fixed in NVENC and Media Foundation encoder modules

Some of you reported that staying in-VR with VRidge for longer than 30-40 minutes resulted in VRidge crashing due to lack of memory. We fixed two memory leaks that caused RAM usage to grow 30-100 MB every minute. Sorry for the crashes, totally our fault.

117 comments:

Thanks thousand for this update and for the quickly answer on twitter. If anyone don't get EliteDangerous working remember to enable HMD on 3d settings and if necessary 60hz.. After that wonderfull.. We wait for frontier to fix graphics.. I'm using a 660gtx and work very very good :)

OK, today needs to get a move on so I can get home and try this out....

If I could make one request, it would be: native RiftCat support for off-phone tracking/gyro modules. If I could spend £30 on something I could tape onto my Cardboard headset, and maybe take some of the CPU load off the phone / free up wifi bandwidth for the graphics stream, that would be nice :). Unless those modules are no better than phone tracking or the amount of bandwidth freed would be insignificant?

Other, more distant ones: could a second phone or a wiimote be used in future to emulate a Vive controller?

If your steam is installed on C:\ there should be no need to changed path and all you have to do is click "Install vridge drivers". However sometimes SteamVR folder is actually named OpenVR then you have to change the path to OpenVR folder like on the screenshot here (http://i.imgur.com/xkdQ1Tj.png). If you have your steam installed on different drive then you need to manually change directory to {Steam folder}\steamapps\common\steamvr

I'm stuck with black screen where the monitor in virtual desktop should be. Using a Samsung S5 and an LG G5. The LG G5, can not display anything correctly when I am looking around, the screen basically tears and overlaps itself everwhere. Black screen is still there for the monitor but the background is clear when the device is completely still.

Hi guys, just tried out VRIDGE with my Xiaomi Redmi Note 2, a little tacky I know, I assumed it'd work since TrinusVR works very well, however I get constant artifacting and lots of frames dropped @ decoder on this phone too. I assumed it would be cpu throttling as previously mentioned but I enabled 'Performance mode' which apparently ignored CPU thermal throttling on the MIUI ROM but still getting artifact. Just thought you guys would like to know!

VRE.Vridge.Transmission stops working when I start up steamVR. Have to force close it. If I don't close it, steam says it's "ready", but my phone will keep connecting and dropping out every 3-5 seconds. I'm using windows 10 64 bit with a rooted HTC m9 phone.

PCars was updated to Oculus SDK 1.3, which is not currently supported by us (licensing-related reasons). You can try running it with Revive which translates oculus games into SteamVr games: https://github.com/LibreVR/Revive

IIRC PCars devs said that they want to support SteamVR natively in the future (and with SteamVR support Vridge will work without any extra layers).

it's a nvidia gtx 570. i found out i had the NVENC box ticked. when it's off, it said i don't have an proper encoder and it will do the same connecting and disconnecting thing. Do i need a HAVE to use a 600 series card?

Vridge Transmission stops working when I start up steamVR. He is trying to connect more and can not SteamVR does not recognize. I have a GTX 760 on Windows 10 64-bit. The strange thing is that before worked. Not now connects some way. Note already tested with NVENC enable / disable. Nvidia Driver 364.72.

I have been unable to figure out how to access Steam VR Desktop Theater or even just the general Steam VR menu that should be accessible and viewed through the HMD. I have an Xbox One controller connected by USB to my PC, it works with Big Screen mode, but none of the buttons bring up any menus or options with in the HMD display.

I did, however, get Elite Dangerous running in Steam VR and that was quite impressive. It ran quite smoothly. Any help I can get on getting access into the Steam Desktop Theater or even just the steam menus in VR where you can set your wallpaper I'm curious to see how that works.

Currently only Steam Controller is supported in our SteamVR driver. We'll try to add Xbox controller too in the future.

Desktop Theater is automatically started for apps that do not support OpenVR/SteamVR when you lanch them while SteamVR is running. They need to have "Enable Steam Deskop Theater" checked in their steam options for it to work.

Thank you, I did get Steam Desktop Theater to come up once but the game video never showed up in the theater. It just kept showing the message Connecting to Game I think it was. But that is a step closer and it may have just been something with that game.

I was able to play a little bit of Dead Space 2 in the Desktop Theater today. It was pretty neat, though the view drifting can be a little cumbersome, at least the desktop theater offers a pretty easy way to recenter the view. Thanks.

Project cars is up to date. I think my problem is steam vr that say it does not initialise correctly. I tried another application (free) for testing named realities and it says that there is no steamvr detected.

You sure you deployed our stream drivers? If so then send me (team@riftcat.com) logs and openvrpaths.vrpaths located in Riftcat/logs and C:\Users\\AppData\Local\openvr respectively. Also refer to your issue in the mail.

Hey Im just setting up my VR rig today so I havent been able to play any of the SteamVR games yet. I only have one question for you though.. Does XBOX360 controller work for all/most of the games or what're you people playing with?

Im using a MSI Ghost Pro laptop, headset is connected, but on my phone (HTC One M8) I just see a white screen and fuzzy lines when I launch game. My graphics card is GeForce GTX 870. Any suggestions on how to get me going?

Hi i just tried this software today but i'm getting massive flickering problems even when trying to use room setup, also i tried to run Rise of the tomb raider and even though it appeared on my pc monitor i just got a black screen on my phone. I did try all 3 video encoders in the options and even changing screen res and bitrate but still no joy.

My mobile is the HTC 10 running MM completely updated, its not rooted but i did unlock my bootloader.

Using Windows 10 x64 pro, 16gb memory, nvidia gtx970 4gb version with the latest nvidia drivers and i have all the windows updates installed.

It should be fixed and working without flickering now. Make sure your SteamVR is updated to the latest version.Regular non-VR games aren't supported and only native VR games work (there are plenty on Steam). Fake VR automatic conversion will be available in the future.

yes i updated to the latest version and the flickerings gone, i've also noticed i only get the black screen when running rise of the tomb raider in directx 12 mode other games seem fine i played castlevania lord of shadow fine, is dx 12 not supported yet?

Ipc connection failed after multiple attempts. Original problem is it doesn't detect headset but i bypass that with running vrmonitor.exe... it opens vrsteam in extended mode but no games working and when i try to toggle to direct mode steam always errors with no ipc connection after multiple attempts

Figured it out! If you have an nvidia,depending on the graphics card, u might be required to upgrade to windows 10 if your headset doesnt get detected. Also ensure u have the latest drivers. Tested this on 2 systems. Cheers!

I have a problem with my oppo f1 phone . I have exported my own game to steamvr and run it to steamvr and it works the problem here is that . It displays on my laptop and my phone (but it works only for just a second) then it doesn't render anymore . What do you think the problem is?

Hello. I have a problem with steamvr. I installed riftcat on my pc and VRidge on S6 edge. This two program are communicating with each other so this is ok. I installed steamvr, and when i play steamvr room setup i don't do it. The next button is inactive on "Establish tracking" setup page. If I close this setup then steam menu appear on s6 screen. When i play projectCar game in vr mode then the game run in pc monitor but s6 screen awaiting VR game stream. In the steamvr program show me "waiting for..."